The concept of home health care began in the 1850's when traveling health care professionals provided in-home visits to patients in need of health care and unable to seek such care on their own. From the outset, however, the home health care system suffered from the problem of "downtime" in traveling to a patient's home to deliver the service needed. In modern times, this problem has been compounded by the shortage of health care professionals providing home health care and by rising medical costs. In fact, nowadays it is often impossible for a home health care professional to justify the costs of performing supervisory or teaching visits, and home health care visits are, too often, limited to basic needs or medical emergencies.
Health care costs in the United States, which now consume 15% of GDP, have been increasing at a rate significantly higher than inflation. In many other industries, new technology has been developed to increase productivity and reduce costs. In health care, however, technology has been used primarily to advance scientific knowledge and improve the quality of care.
According to a recent report from the Hudson Institute, it is estimated that, due to increased health care costs, work force shortages and increased longevity, the United States has a time span of approximately ten years to develop a coordinated national health care plan to be able to care for the dependent population. If a workable health care service delivery system is not in place by then, the population demographics may make it nearly impossible to expect a marked decrease of persons in the labor pool to generate the means to provide health/home care. This crisis will be heightened as the baby boomers become older and the manpower in every discipline continues to dwindle. A critical need therefore exists for new technology to be developed which will have the effect of reducing the cost of health care while improving the quality of the health care system.